


Counterbalance

by ArgentLives



Series: Across Every Universe (You are Home) [4]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Guardian Angels, Angst, Blood and Injury, Character Death, F/M, Heavy Angst, So much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 03:28:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4084948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgentLives/pseuds/ArgentLives
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He begs and he pleads for them to make him human, to let him be with her. If he really does exist because of her, for her, then this is what he feels like he’s meant for. Not just to protect her, not just to guide her, but to be with her. Maybe he was made to love her, he says. Maybe he’s different. Maybe it was meant to be this way. They don’t listen.</p><p>((Barry is Iris's guardian angel who's kept her alive far past her death date, and he's about to pay the price.))</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counterbalance

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "I’m you’re guardian angel who’s been breaking the rules and keeping you alive longer than you should be and as punishment I have to watch you die." warning: major character death; I apologize in advance??

Saving her isn’t the only rule he breaks. He breaks a lot, actually, when it comes to her, although it is the first one.

He was created to be there for her, so he resolves to be there for her. He’s just an abstract concept, really, nothing solid, nothing real, until the first time that she needs him.

It’s right after her mom leaves, and there’s this hole in her family and a loneliness in her that her dad alone can’t quite fill, not yet, no matter how hard he tries. She spends most of her days crying when her dad's away at work, or when no one else is looking—or so she thinks, at least.

So he appears to her first as a little boy right around her age—her imaginary friend, she calls him. That’s what she needs him to be, so that’s what he is. She names him, too, gives him a watery grin one day when he’s talked her down from a panic attack and says  _‘Barry. That’s what I’m gonna call you. I’ve always wanted a friend named Barry.’_  

There’s nothing else he can think to do but just nod and accept it. He doesn’t know why, he’s not supposed to have a name, but somehow it seems to fit. And he’d be lying if he said he didn’t like it.

He’ll confess that the first time he saves her, it’s for selfish reasons. He likes talking to her, he likes being around her, but he only exists because she does. Once she’s gone, he will be too. He’s already been told that she’s not meant to survive, that her life is supposed to be a short one. He’s not supposed to mess with a deadline that’s already been set. But he’s not quite ready to go yet, and if she does, he does, so he doesn’t listen.

Anyway, what’s the point of a guardian angel if they can’t save the one they’re made to protect?

He swoops in and grabs her out of the line of the car that’s barreling her way when she chases her ball into the street, unaware, and deposits her safely back on the side of the road. He doesn’t stay long enough for her to see him with his wings out, but he watches from afar as her startled gaze follows the car that had been so close to hitting her as it speeds past, as she turns her face up to the sky and smiles, whispering  _‘thank you, Barry.’_

He holds on to that later, when he’s being reprimanded, when they’re sneering at him in outrage, drilling the rules into his head again, telling him this will come back to get him, in the end. He still can't bring himself to regret it.

 

The second rule he breaks is that he lets her touch him.

He’s keeping her company one day while her father is at work and she’s all alone, just a scared and sad little girl in a house that must feel so empty, and that’s when she asks him. They’re having a tea party with some of her stuffed animals when she gets a look in her eye, a sparkle that takes him off guard, and she tilts her head curiously.

“What do they look like?” she asks, and it takes him a moment to realize what she’s talking about. “Your wings. I know you have them. It’s how you saved me. Can I see them?”

He knows he shouldn’t, he’s not supposed to, but she seems so excited, and she doesn’t really know that he’s real, anyway—or at least she won’t later—so he decides it can’t hurt too much. So he lets her see.

She gasps and reaches over to him, holding a hand out and then hesitating, throwing him a questioning look.  _Is this okay?_ her eyes seem to ask. He should move away. He should shy away from her touch. He should shake his head no. He doesn’t.

He nods and she takes it as a  _go ahead_ , and her fingers brush his wings carefully, gently, softly. She smiles to herself and then at him, the light in her eyes making something unfamiliar squirm inside of him.

“They’re beautiful,” she says, beaming at him. “You’re beautiful. My beautiful Barry.”

He likes the way that sounds. And, likewise, it’s the first time starts to think of her as Iris—his Iris, too—instead of just his charge. The muscles in his face feel strange as he tries to mimic her expression, and yet he finds it’s not too hard to smile back when she’s looking at him like that and he’s echoing her words, thinking ‘ _my beautiful Iris_.’

 

The third is that he interferes.

When she gets too old for an imaginary friend, he has no choice but to leave her be. But after a while he misses her too much, and he wonders if she misses him too, so he starts to visit her in her dreams. He knows it’s wrong. He knows it’s against the rules. But he needs to see her, anyway. And they talk, and she smiles, and he can touch her even though it’s only in her head and in a way it’s even better than how it used to be, for a little while at least.

And then one day he sees her kissing her first serious boyfriend, and he’s forced to watch with every single, agonizing second as she falls further in love with someone else, and there’s a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach and a bitter taste on his tongue and it makes him feel…well, it makes him  _feel._ And therein lies the problem. She smiles that beautiful smile of hers, only it’s not for him anymore, and he feels. Jealousy. Disappointment. Frustration. Sadness. Most of all, longing.

So he starts popping up again, whenever she needs someone. The friendly stranger on the train, offering her comfort when she needs a shoulder to lean on. The person at the coffee shop who makes her her favorite drink, and gives it to her for free when she’s having a rough day. The outside source who slips her the information she’s missing when she’s struggling to finish an article she’s been working on. 

And, this time for less selfish reasons—although maybe selfish in a different way, if he’s being honest—the person who saves her. When she somehow lands herself in a hostage situation, when she nearly gets into a car accident that would have left her paralyzed, if not dead, when she nearly chokes to death on a cronut one morning. 

He knows it’s bound to get him in trouble, that there’s a reason she’s so accident prone, that he’s helped her survive far past her time, but he can’t stop. He’s whoever she needs him to be again, and even though he wears a new face each time she sees him sometimes she’ll get that light in her eye again, sometimes she’ll smile at him like she recognizes him, like she knows him, and he thinks that maybe, just maybe, she does. And that makes it all worth it.

 

The fourth is that he loves her. He’s not supposed to feel love. He’s not supposed to _feel_ anything.

He begs and he pleads for them to make him human, to let him be with her. If he really does exist because of her, for her, then this is what he feels like he’s meant for. Not just to protect her, not just to guide her, but  _to be with her_. Maybe he was made to love her, he says. Maybe he’s different. Maybe it was meant to be this way. They don’t listen.

And then one day they hold him down, they make him watch as she snoops around a crime scene she’s not meant to be at, trying to get a few juicy details and collect evidence for her article. It’s after hours, so the place is empty, and she looks left and right before ducking under the yellow crime scene tape and taking in what’s before her. He supposes he’s not the only one who’s got a tendency for breaking the rules. 

He resists the urge to call out to her, to tell her to run away, because he knows she won’t hear him and he knows it will only anger the one’s keeping him here even further, but it’s hard when he can tell that she doesn’t see the man who’s lying in wait for her and all he can feel is dread. She doesn’t even have time to look surprised before he shoots her, looks around to make sure no one is around to see, and then leaves. Just  _leaves_ her there. Broken and bleeding and dying, crumpled on the floor. They don’t let Barry go to her until they’re sure it’s too late.

To anyone else it will probably look like she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like some unfortunate tragedy. That it was always just a danger of the job, of investigating and reporting on dangerous topics, on looking into things people wanted covered up. He knows better. He knows that this was staged. Planned out from the second he messed with her first death date, and because of his actions ever since.

She’s bleeding out by the time he reaches her, the pool of red around her soaking through his jeans as he kneels down next to her. “No,” he croaks, gathering her into his arms. It feels strange—it’s the first time he’s used this voice in a while. Since he’s even spoken out loud. “No, no, no, no, please… _please_ …”

“Barry…” she whispers, and he notices the flicker of recognition in her eyes. She’s looking at him, and she’s seeing him, really seeing him. He holds her head up, his hand tangled in her hair, and strokes her cheek with his thumb, his touch light as a feather. She smiles weakly and coughs up blood when she tries to speak again. It stains her lips like some sick impression of the lipstick she always wears. “Beautiful Barry…”

He can pinpoint the moment she stops seeing anything at all.

He sobs and holds her close, tight against his chest, refusing to believe it. Desperate to feel the warmth from her skin and the reassuring beat of her heart, desperate to believe she’s not dead. He gets neither. Already, she feels cold, and not because the blood has cooled in her veins or because the heat has left her body yet, but because he knows her life has already slipped away, and there’s no getting it back. And her heart isn’t beating.

Just like that, he feels the light die inside of him. He feels the wings molt from his back as his breathing becomes labored—since when has he ever even had to breathe?— and a strange and foreign wetness fills his eyes. The loss of his wings should make him feel lighter, like shedding a weight he’s been keen to be free of for so long now, but instead all he feels is the crushing heaviness that sits on his chest, that weighs him down and tethers him here with her blood staining his hands that are shaking now like he never knew they could and her body limp in his arms and how could he have ever wanted to have this physical, beating heart when it hurts so god damned much, when it’s aching and throbbing and he wants to throw up and  _oh God_ —

He knows that they’re mocking him. Finally granting him his wish, finally allowing him to be mortal, all he’s ever wanted so that he could be with her. So that he could stay with her, be human, someone that she could love. Someone that she could spend the rest of her life with. So that he could grow old by her side.

And then taking away his reason for all of that, violently ripping it away from him, and making him stay. Breaking the rules for him just like he’s broken all the rest, except they know that this time he doesn’t want them broken, that he doesn’t want to be able to keep on existing after her. 

It’s the ultimate punishment. For saving her. For  _loving_  her. Forcing him to live on this Earth, to exist in a world where his  _reason_  for existence no longer does.  _What’s the fucking point of a guardian angel if they can’t save the one they’re made to protect?_  He guesses he has his answer. There is none.

First he sees black. Nothing but darkness clouds his vision—a darkness signifying a black future, a black horizon, the gaping hole in his chest and the darkness that’s filling his heart, that’s eating away at his soul, that’s threatening to take him over. He sucks in a deep, trembling breath, and stops fighting. He lets it.

And then he sees red. Red like rage and anger he’s never experienced before, because all he’s really ever known before this is love, and now that’s gone.  _And someone needs to pay for this._ He clenches his fists so tightly, so forcefully, that the nails digging into his palms draw blood, sticky and wet and foreign on his hands and red, red, red like everything else. Yes, someone needs to pay for this. He feels something snap inside him as he steels his resolve.

_Someone is going to pay._

 


End file.
